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New Orleans II

Friday in New Orleans.

My girlfriend, S. and I wake up early so we can go get coffee at Cafe du Monde. This is somethng you MUST do if you go to N.O. The boys, her hubby, J and mine, G do not want to go, they want to sleep in so we leave them in our shared hotel room (separate beds, of course).

We walk down street after street of beautifully balconied buildings. (how's that for some alliteration, folks?) and here's the one downside of New Orleans. I, at this particular part of the morning, am feeling a wee bit hungover...not major but just a little. The streets of NO at that hour of the morning (7:30 or so) smell like...how should I put this?...rotting garbage soaked in stale beer with a soupcon of puke on top...not good, not good on a good day never mind a slightly hungover day.

So, here I am doggedly making my way to the coffee shop for my beignets and tea (sorry, I don't drink coffee). We get there and really, at that hour of the morning the cafe itself is not smellin' quite up to par but I soldier on.

Cafe du Monde does not sell tea. Huh?

Yup, no tea. I had to settle for chocolate milk which as it turns out was a better choice...settled the ole stomach down right away.

Beignets...oh...these are deep friend donut-type things covered in powdered sugar. Now, understand me, by "covered" I mean, they put three donuts on a plate and then pour about a cup and a half of powdered sugar on top so that they are buried under a hill of sugar...oh my. They were good.

We walked back to the hotel and as we are going down the hall and giggling...like girls will do...we are saying that the room (where we've left J and G) is awfully quiet. We open the door to hear the boys suddenly yelling, "Brokeback Mountain! Brokeback Mountain!" It was hilarious.

A small nap was had by all and then we trundled off to the French Quarter Festival Food Booths at Jackson Square.

You may have noticed I capitilized all of that and rightly so. The food, oh the food! And the drinks...mmm, the drinks.

Here's just a list of what we did and ate and drank...

blackened catfish sandwich..(I would have gladly married this sandwich and the man who made it for me)

crawfish and goat cheese crepe (ha! got the recipe for this baby, yummmmmmy)

beer (always good, I say)

somethin' called crawfish francaise...(good but better to eat sitting down.)

hurricane (yummy, summery, slushy drink)

pina colada ('nuff said)

bread pudding with whisky sauce (only had a bite of this but oh my!)

Then we dipped our feet in the Mississippi (just J and me)Everyone was pretty tired but the four of us S, J, G and me were starting to feel ever so slightly tipsy again. K and E (our other friends) were more tired so they headed back to the hotel.

The evil twin couples (that's us) went on a trolley ride and found to whole other food booth parks.
...with different food and different drinks

lobster dumplings, shrimp ettouffee, cajun storm daquiries, hand grenades.

We also met Miss May from Harrah's Casino there in the Big Easy. She told us we had to go to Harrah's for their seafood buffet and their ice bar. That's right...us hicks were gonna go drink our drinks on a bar made of ice. Woohoo!

We hustled back to the hotel for showers and a change of clothes...picked up K and E and headed out.

The plan was to walk down Bourbon and see what there was to see and make our way to Harrah's ( oh, probably 15 or so blocks, all told)

Yeah...

We made it a block and a half, walked into a bar and didn't come out until the end of the night.

Great bar, though. The Bourbon Street Blues Company.
Fantastic band, good drinks, nice crowd, great dancing.

Oh, did we have fun.

And so closed our Friday night, except for the part where I almost starved to death by not eating dinner until 12:30 and the part where I almost went postal when my meal took too long to arrive at the table.

It all turned out good though and when my meal finally came...it was good, bebe, real good.

Stay tuned for our continuing adventures in the Big Easy.

8:30 p.m. - 2006-04-29

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